


Patience

by kaliawai512



Series: It's Raining [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adopted Children, Angst, Child Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Gen, Past Character Death, So brace yourself, Toriel does her best, Toriel needs a hug, but she still makes mistakes, you all know how this ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-27 08:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14421924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaliawai512/pseuds/kaliawai512
Summary: Five years after the death of her two children, another falls down, and Toriel is faced with motherhood yet again.The story of Patience, the Light Blue soul.(Prequel toIt's Raining, but can pretty much stand alone.)





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing to say about this one. You know what you guys are getting into. So, uh ... *cough* Enjoy?

He hurt.

Everything hurt. His whole body hurt. Why did it hurt so bad? It was like when he tripped and fell down the stairs but even worse. Did he fall? Where did he fall? Why wasn’t Mommy here to help him? Or Daddy or Aunt May?

He whimpered, biting his lip, but he couldn’t keep the tears from falling. It hurt. Why was no one here? Why was no one helping him? He tried to open his eyes, but the tears made everything blurry and when he lifted his arm to wipe them away his arm hurt so bad he wanted to scream.

But it hurt to scream, so his voice died in his throat before it could come out. A sob came out a second later, and another, and another. He couldn’t move and everything hurt and he didn’t know where he was and he just wanted to go home.

He didn’t know how long he had been crying when he heard the footsteps.

They were slow at first, like someone walking down the street. Then they paused, and he heard a gasp. The footsteps started up again, much faster than before, and he felt someone kneel down next to him. Someone very big. Maybe it was Daddy?

“Oh goodness …”

That … wasn’t Daddy’s voice.

It wasn’t Mommy’s voice, either. Not even Aunt May’s. It sounded like a lady, though. He tried to turn his head toward it, but moving his head hurt almost as much as moving his arm. He whimpered again.

Something warm and soft, like a cat, touched his arm. He wanted to jerk away, but the touch was gentle, and didn’t even hurt. It moved over his arm, then his other arm, half-tucked under his body, before it touched his face. It pulled back, and he thought he heard a shaky sigh.

“Don’t worry now,” the voice murmured. “This won’t hurt.”

He flinched. Things _always_ hurt when people said they wouldn’t, and everything already hurt so bad. But when the cat-touch returned to his arm, it didn’t hurt. It felt … warm. Warmer than before, and … smooth, like water, even though it wasn’t wet.

It moved over his arm, then over his chest and his stomach and his back. It touched his other arm, and his face, brushing over his legs, even though he hadn’t noticed them hurting before. And when it moved away, the pain in each spot was gone. Better than Band-Aids, better than that cream stuff Mommy put on his cuts, better than a cold bath when he got a sunburn. It was warm and comfy and cozy, like being bundled up in a big fluffy blanket, and he never wanted it to stop.

It did stop, though, and he tried not to whine as the hand moved away. A second later, it settled on his head again, stroking his hair.

“How does that feel?”

He wiggled his fingers and his toes, moved his arms and legs. He opened his eyes, squinting at the bright light over his head, the tears making everything blurry. “… better.”

He blinked a few more times, and the tears still in his eyes dripped away.

It was … a goat.

Sort of. A very big goat, who looked a little like a human but with white fur and a snout and horns and really big, floppy ears. A goat who wore clothes and … talked. Could goats talk? Daddy said animals couldn’t talk, unless it was in cartoons, or Lisa’s pet parrot Benny who said things you said to him.

He wondered, for a second, whether a big goat should be scary. It—she, it sounded like a she—didn’t _seem_ scary. She made him feel better. And she had a nice face, gentle, concerned, like Mommy when he scraped his knee.

She sat up straighter next to him. Even sitting down, she looked huge, but she still didn’t look scary.

“What is your name, my child?” she asked, tilting her head.

He pushed himself up a little more so she didn’t seem quite so tall. “... Heng.”

The big goat nodded. She wasn’t smiling, but he thought she looked happy.

“That’s a lovely name. How old are you?”

“Three and five mo’ths,” he replied, holding his head up higher.

Something twinkled in her bright red eyes, but she just nodded again.

“Three and five months. That’s very impressive,” she said. Heng’s chest warmed, and he sat up more without even thinking about it. “My name is Toriel. I watch over this place. I’ll take you back to my home, where you can rest and have something good to eat. How does that sound?”

Heng thought for a moment. He _wanted_ to go back to Mommy and Daddy. But … he was tired now, and he felt better, and food sounded good. He could ask the big goat to take him home afterward. He wasn’t supposed to go places with strangers, but … she had helped him. And he was already somewhere without his Mommy and Daddy, and he didn’t see any police officers nearby. And he didn’t want to stay here by himself.

Finally, he nodded.

“Kay.”

The big goat smiled. Heng didn’t know goats could smile like people. “Good.”

She held out her hand. Or maybe it was a paw. It was very big, but Heng waited only a second before he put his own small hand in her palm. She got to her feet, helping him stand at the same time, never letting go of his hand.

She was much, much bigger when she stood up.

But she gave Heng another gentle smile, and if Heng had been afraid at all before, he wasn’t anymore.

She led him forward, down the dirt trail, back toward what looked like some sort of entrance up ahead. And even though his feet stumbled and his head spun and everything had never felt more strange, Heng held tight to her hand and followed.

* 

There was a child sleeping in Asriel’s old bed.

A _human_ child sleeping in Asriel’s old bed.

Toriel knew this. She had brought him there herself, settled him into bed after he had gobbled down a large piece of casserole and an even larger slice of pie. She didn’t have anything that could work for pajamas in his size, but he didn’t seem to mind sleeping in his clothes, and it wouldn’t take her long to put something together.

That wasn’t the hard part.

She spent a good ten minutes standing outside of the— _his_ —bedroom door after she closed it behind him. She could barely hear his breathing through the wood, but she swore she could feel him there. Alive. So small, so helpless. She wasn’t even sure he realized what was going on. He had been hungry and scared and tired, and he had followed her without question, but when he woke up …

His family must be looking for him. They were probably terrified. And there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t get him back up the hole, they had learned centuries ago that even if they managed to scale the walls of the cave, a remnant of the main barrier prevented them from passing through it. And Chara had mentioned offhand once that the cave containing the hole into the underground was hard to find. There was a chance that his family would find it, but if they didn’t …

She couldn’t get him home. He was stuck here. Like Chara had been stuck here.

But Chara had never seemed _bothered_ by that fact. They never mentioned a family, not one they wanted to go back to, anyway. Toriel had never asked the details. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had made Chara’s family so bad that they didn’t even want to speak of them.

But this child—Heng—could very well have a better family. One he missed. One he would never be able to see again.

How was she going to tell a three-year-old child that he could never see his family again?

Would he believe her? Would he try to run? How could she stop him from running without ruining his happiness? This wasn’t as simple as keeping a close eye on the stove when it was on so Asriel didn’t toddle over and burn himself. She wanted this child to be safe, but she also wanted him to be happy. To live a life of joy, not imprisonment. And living here, with only herself for company … certainly, she believed she was a fairly good mother, but he needed others in his life. Friends, other children to play with. There were a few monsters who had remained in the Ruins, but hardly any with families.

She had been here for five years. Five years of no contact with the outside world. She had told herself she would stay here forever, but that was much easier to say when it was just her. Maybe she should try again. Maybe she should give the monsters, give Asgore, another chance. Then at least this child would have a community to be a part of. And perhaps Asgore …

Toriel stiffened and felt her hands curl instinctively, until her claws dug into her palms.

Words echoed in her head, words uttered in a voice she could never forget, no matter how much time passed. Words that had destroyed what remained of her world, words shouted in fury, in desperation, from the balcony of the castle. Words that had made monsters cry out in agreement, through their grief and their tears.

Asgore wanted to kill them.

He was _going_ to kill them. He had issued the decree, told the Royal Guard to hunt down any human that fell here. She had heard it. She had seen it. She wouldn’t have left if she didn’t believe he had meant it.

But until now, it had only been words.

Now there was a child. A real, living child. Could Asgore really do it? Could he murder a little boy and take his soul? Could he look at this child and _not_ see Chara when they first fell, scared, alone, unsure?

Could he live with himself, knowing that he had become exactly the sort of beast the humans had believed them to be two thousand years ago?

She didn’t want to believe it. But he had made the decree, he had been so angry, so _determined,_ and if there was a chance, even the slightest chance that he had meant it …

She couldn’t risk it.

She couldn’t risk Asgore harming this child, for any reason.

So he would have to stay here. With her. Locked away from the rest of the world—but safe. He would be _safe._ And that was what mattered.

She let out a long, heavy sigh, pushed herself away from the wall, and started toward the kitchen.

Well. If this child was to face a lifetime in a place he didn’t know, at the very least, she could start it off with a nice breakfast.

*

This wasn’t his bed.

It was the first thing Heng noticed, before he even opened his eyes, and for a minute he just lay there, trying to figure it out. Had he stayed over at Aunt May’s again? Were they on a trip, staying in a hotel? He always slept in Mommy’s bed when they stayed in a hotel, but he couldn’t feel Mommy beside him. Maybe she had already gotten up?

He ran his hand over the sheets. They weren’t his sheets. They were soft, they felt nice, but they weren’t _his_ sheets. His pillow was too big. He _knew_ his pillow, and it was small and fluffy and he carried it with him even if they went on a trip, and this was _not_ his pillow. They were … they were camping, right? But he had still brought his pillow with him, because he _always_ brought his pillow with him.

He couldn’t hear Mommy or Daddy breathing, either. They were sleeping right next to him before. And he couldn’t hear the sounds of the trees through the tent … and they had been in sleeping bags, not in beds …

His eyelids were heavy, but he pushed them open anyway, blinking away the last of sleep. He could see … pink? He thought it was pink. Maybe pink and orange. The walls were pink and orange. The tent had been blue. And there was a quilt over him, and soft sheets, and a squishy mattress underneath him. And …

He wasn’t wearing his pajamas. Or … or his clothes from the day before.

These weren’t his clothes.

They were soft, like the sheets, but they _weren’t his._

Heng didn’t move for a long time after that. He just lay there, looking at the room around him and trying to remember what Mommy said to do if he got lost. Just … stay there, right? Wait for someone to come and get you.

But … that was when you got lost in the woods, and he wasn’t in the woods. He was …

He was in someone else’s house.

He wasn’t hurt. He had been hurt, he remembered hurting a lot, but he wasn’t hurt anymore.

Maybe … maybe Mommy and Daddy had found him. Maybe they took him to someone else’s house to rest, since they were so far away from home.

Maybe they were waiting for him. Maybe they were just outside.

He pushed himself up and climbed out from under the covers, dropping down to the floor. His feet were bare, but the wood was warm, and he wiggled his toes against it, looking down at the striped sweater that had replaced his T-shirt. He walked over to the door, reached up to turn the knob very slowly, very carefully, and pushed the door open.

He stood there for a few seconds, looking from side to side. It was a hallway. To his left, there were a few more doors, and to his right, there was … a living room. He thought. He couldn’t see it all from this angle, but he thought it looked like a living room.

For another few seconds, he just listened for Mommy or Daddy’s voice. But he heard nothing. Maybe they were still there, though. Just … not talking.

He took a deep breath, held his head high, and walked into the living room.

It _was_ a living room. Small, with just an armchair, no couch, a bookshelf, and a fireplace, with a fire crackling on old logs. He bit his lip and kept on going, toward what looked like a kitchen.

And as he got closer, he could hear noises. Not voices but … movement. Maybe Daddy was cooking breakfast? He walked a little faster, almost stumbling over his own feet as his heart pounded and he hoped, he hoped _so bad,_ that he would see Daddy’s smiling face.

He stepped into the kitchen.

Daddy wasn’t there.

But someone else was.

It was a … goat.

A tall goat, standing on two legs.

Wearing a dress.

And he … he had seen her before. Hadn’t he?

She was standing by the counter, but when he stepped in, she turned around to look at him. Her eyes were wide, her mouth a little open, and Heng just stood there, hugging himself, wondering whether Mommy or Daddy had ever told him what to do if you saw a giant goat person standing in the kitchen. He didn’t think they had. But maybe he forgot.

He didn’t feel like she was going to hurt him. He didn’t feel … scared of her, not like he had felt scared of some grown-ups. He knew Mommy had told him to “trust his gut,” even if he didn’t know what else to do.

But she was still a giant goat person standing in a kitchen, and Mommy and Daddy were still nowhere to be found.

The goat person finally seemed to snap out of her daze. Her eyes went soft, and she cleared her throat as she turned to face him.

“Hello,” she said. He had heard her voice before, too. She smiled, very gently, and tilted her head, but didn’t move any closer. “How are you feeling?”

“Where am I?” Heng asked.

The goat lady paused and bit her lip—he never knew goats had lips like humans did, but he didn’t think goats talked, either. She looked him over, head to toe.

“You were hurt, so I took you to my house to heal you. You talked to me a little then, but you were tired, so you might not remember. Are you feeling any better?”

Heng shrugged and looked at his feet, shifting them and chewing his bottom lip. He remembered hurting. He remembered going somewhere with a lady covered in thick white fur with big floppy ears. He remembered eating something warm and yummy and being tucked into a bed.

He looked back up.

“Is my Mommy here?”

The lady flinched and glanced away, then let out a long, heavy breath.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” she replied, very gently. “She isn’t.”

Heng’s chest hurt. He shifted his weight to his other foot. “Daddy?”

She looked at him again. Her eyes were sad, like they were trying to say she was sorry without saying the word with her lips.

“No.”

Heng swallowed back the tears trying to climb up his throat.

“Coming soon?”

The lady looked at him for a long time. A really long time. Heng waited, watching her, she would answer, she was nice, he _knew_ she would answer. Finally, she sighed again.

“I’m afraid you … got lost. You were separated from your parents,” she replied. She gave a small, careful smile. “But … I will take care of you for now. You’ll be safe here. I promise.”

It felt like she was avoiding the question, like when Heng asked Mommy something that made her uncomfortable. She smiled a little wider and very slowly stood up from the table.

“My name is Toriel,” she went on. She tilted her head. “And yours is Heng, right?”

Heng stuck out his bottom lip, but nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Toriel smiled a little wider. It looked nervous.

“I’ve got some breakfast for you, Heng. Cinnamon rolls. Cinnamon _bunnies,_ actually. See? They’ve got big ears.” She picked up one of the things on the plate in front of her and pointed at the ears. They really did look like bunnies. “Would you like some?”

Heng hadn’t thought much about food up until now. He was too busy trying to figure out where he was. But … Daddy had always said it was easier to think when you weren’t hungry, and now that Heng thought about it, he was actually pretty hungry.

So after a few seconds, he nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

Toriel smiled even bigger.

“Wonderful. What would you like to drink?”

Heng thought about it. “Chocolate milk?”

“I think I can manage that,” Toriel replied. She held out her hand toward the chair at the table closest to him. “Come. You go ahead and get started on the cinnamon bunnies, and I’ll get your chocolate milk.”

Heng didn’t say anything, but he glanced at the chair and the cinnamon bunny, then back to the lady. She kept smiling. Finally, very slowly, very carefully, he walked across the room and climbed up into the chair. It was a big chair, but he already knew how to climb onto the kitchen counter, and a chair was easier than that.

Toriel smiled a little wider and walked across the room toward the fridge—Heng didn’t know goat people had fridges, but he guessed if they had chocolate milk, they had to have fridges—and Heng turned to the plate in front of it, breathing in the warm, sweet smell and licking his lips, even as he continued to fidget in his seat.

Mommy and Daddy would be here soon. He knew they would. They would never leave him somewhere he didn’t know. They would be here soon.

And this goat lady was nice. He would be okay until then.

He picked up the cinnamon bunny and took a small bite. His eyes lit up as the sweetness melted on his tongue, and before he knew it, he had finished the first one and moved on to the second.

Toriel placed a glass full of chocolate milk in front of him and gave him a small smile.

He found himself smiling back.

Yeah. Mommy and Daddy would come for him. But for now, this was okay.

*

It was three days before Heng brought up his parents again.

Toriel was … surprised, even if she couldn’t help but be relieved at not having to give an explanation when she was still processing the situation herself. Time passed differently for a child so young, and she would have expected him to completely melt down after the first day. But he didn’t. He looked sad sometimes, but was quickly cheered up with a book or a snack or a kind word, and seemed to have accepted his parents’ absence without much trouble at all.

At first, she thought that perhaps he really was like Chara. Chara had never asked about their family. Chara had never asked about going home. Chara hadn’t _wanted_ to go home, and at first, Toriel wondered whether Heng had come from a less-than-loving family as well.

But Chara had been different, in just about every way. Chara had been distant, suspicious, while Heng accepted her gestures of affection openly, if occasionally a little nervous and shy. Chara had been biting, rude, challenging, the sort of behavior she expected of a child who hadn’t been treated well, while Heng was generally very mild and sweet. Every child reacted differently to maltreatment, she knew, and abuse was extremely rare among monsters, leaving her with very little to go on. But she saw no signs that he had fallen into the mountain while escaping from a bad home.

In a way, she should have been glad that he asked about his parents.

But just because she should have been glad didn’t mean she actually was.

Even though she had been thinking about her response for days, even though she had come up with a dozen possible explanations and excuses, it still caught her off-guard when he finally asked again, on the morning of his fourth day, while they were eating breakfast. He had helped her cook, mixing the pancake batter together before she fried it up. They decorated them with chocolate chips formed into little smiley faces, and they laughed when some of the batter flew out of the bowl and got all over their faces.

Heng didn’t sound upset. He didn’t sound like he had asked something he was desperate to know.

He was just … quietly curious.

Like he was asking whether or not they would be having pasta for dinner.

But she only had to look at his face to see how important the question really was.

It took her almost a minute to give a coherent answer, and another half minute to get it past her lips.

“They can’t come get you yet.”

She didn’t mean to say “yet.” If she had been thinking at all, she wouldn’t have said “yet.” Because “yet” was a promise she couldn’t keep, no matter how hard she wished she could.

Heng loved his parents, and by all evidence, his parents loved him, and she would have been glad to reunite them if she could.

If.

But she couldn’t take it back, and if Heng noticed the distress on her face, he said nothing about it. He looked a little disappointed, but just said “okay” and asked her to pass the syrup.

Breakfast, and the rest of the day, passed without any more issues at all.

But Toriel knew it wouldn’t last forever.

She couldn’t keep shielding him from the truth.

Days turned into a week, and a week turned into three, which turned, very quickly, into a full month. Then another, and another after that.

Heng asked about his parents, at least once every few days, and each time, Toriel expected him to finally start shouting at her, to beg to go home, to sob and plead and insist that he wanted to go home. He was an ordinary child from what seemed like a good family. It was exactly what he should have done.

But he didn’t.

Every time she told him that she couldn’t take him home just yet, he just looked a little sad, nodded, and asked what they were having for dinner, or if they could play a game, or, once, if she could teach him how to knit.

Every time she wanted to chastise herself for not telling him straight-out.

She couldn’t wait forever. But each time he asked, it seemed a little easier to put it off just one more time.

Heng settled into his daily routine. He seemed happy, most of the time, even if she caught him occasionally staring at nothing, his eyes a little sad. They baked and played games and she taught him everything he wanted to learn, knitting and reading and cooking and how to play “drums” on one of her old saucepans.

Yes. It was easy to forget. It was easy to pretend that this was the way it would always be.

But she still knew, deep down, that pretending didn’t make it true.

*

“You’re not gonna take me back to Mommy and Daddy, are you?”

Toriel’s head snapped up from her book so fast he wondered if it had hurt. Usually she heard if he came in--she could hear him even on tip-toes, he had learned—but not this time. Or maybe she just didn’t think he was going to talk.

She blinked at him for a second, before she realized what he had said. Her mouth pressed into a thin line, like when she was upset about something but didn’t want to tell him, and she looked down at her lap.

“Heng …”

“Were you ever gonna take me back?” he asked, clutching the bottom of his shirt in tight fists.

She closed her eyes and let out a long breath, then looked back up at him. Her eyes were sad.

“Heng … I would take you home right away if I could,” she said, and he almost believed her. “But … there is no way out. Monsters have been down here a very long time, and … no one has been able to leave.”

She paused before she said it, like she did when she told him that yes, of course Santa would be able to find him here at Christmas even though he wasn’t at his house. She sounded sad. She sounded … sorry. Like she was apologizing, even though she didn’t say it.

It took a few more seconds for her words to sink in, and it felt a little like the time he had fallen into the deep end of the pool, splashing face-first into the water and realizing he couldn’t breathe.

“I’m never gonna go home.”

Toriel pressed her lips together, her eyes soft and hurting and he didn’t want her to hurt but _he_ hurt he hurt more every second he was breathing but he felt like he couldn’t and … and …

“I’m never gonna see ‘em again,” he said, even quieter than before. His breath shook harder. “They … I’ll never s-see ‘em … I …”

His voice died in his throat, and he swallowed so hard he almost choked.

Never. Never was … that was a really, really long time. Never was … _forever._

He would never feel Mommy hug him again. Never feel Daddy mess up his hair and hear Mommy sigh because she had spent _so long_ getting it to look right. Never watch Aunt May make funny faces across the table when she came over for dinner.

Never sleep in his old bed. Never play with his old toys. Never see Lisa’s pet parrot Benny learn new words.

Never see the sun. Or the stars.

He didn’t feel the tears in his eyes until they were dripping off his chin, and he didn’t see Toriel get up from the chair until he felt her arms wrap around him and lift him off his feet. She was big and warm and soft and comfy but she wasn’t Mommy, she wasn’t Daddy, she wasn’t Lisa, and it didn’t matter how many cinnamon bunnies she gave him or how much chocolate milk or how many toys or hugs, because _she wasn’t Mommy._

She hugged him, and he cried harder.

“I wanna go home, Toriel … I wanna go _home_ …”

She squeezed him even tighter than before, rubbing circles on his head and his hair would really be messed up now, Mommy wouldn’t like it, she would want to smooth it down and he wanted her to stop but he never wanted her to stop because it was the only thing he had, she was warm and safe and he wanted to go home but if he had to be here he never wanted Toriel to let him go.

“I know … I’m sorry … I am so sorry, my child …” she whispered, and she _was_ sorry, he knew she was sorry, but it didn’t make it better, it didn’t change anything, he knew she wasn’t trying to be mean she wasn’t trying to keep him here even though he could go home but that didn’t make it better.

He cried harder, and she held him tighter. He could feel her breath shaking, and the hum of something that wasn’t quite a heartbeat in her chest.

“I promise, as long as you are here, I will give you the best life I can. I know … I can never replace your parents, but I will always be here to care for you, no matter what.”

She sounded like Mommy.

Mommy when she held him when he was sad. Mommy when she rocked him to sleep after a bad day. Mommy tucking him into bed, Mommy holding him when he climbed into hers.

She sounded like Mommy every time she made his tears go away.

But she wasn’t Mommy.

So Heng’s tears stayed.

He cried, and she hugged him, and eventually his tears dried up, like a water glass spilling over the edges that had finally gone empty. Then he just lay there in her arms, feeling the warmth of her body and the beat of her not-heart.

And all he could think until she finally carried him to bed was that he would never feel his Mommy’s heart beat again.

*

Heng said nothing for the next two weeks.

He got out of bed in the morning, but only when Toriel woke him up. He ate, but only when Toriel asked him to. He spent most of the day sitting in the rug, staring at his feet, sniffing back tears so they wouldn’t fall.

He let himself really cry one more time, and after that, no more tears came at all.

He thought maybe he had run out of tears. But he still cried when he tripped on the way out of his room and scraped his knee, and when the onions in dinner hadn’t been cooked enough. He just didn’t cry for his home. For his aunt. For Daddy, or for Mommy.

Maybe he just knew there was no point. It was like crying for a cookie when there were no cookies, when there was no way to _get_ more cookies.

Heng knew the difference between a grown-up who didn’t let you have something because they didn’t want you to have it, and a grown-up who wished they could give you what you wanted, but couldn’t find a way.

He knew Toriel would take him home if she could.

It still hurt. It still hurt really, really bad. Worse than anything he had ever felt before. But he knew it wasn’t going to get better. It wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t going to get Mommy or Daddy or Auntie back, no matter how much he cried.

So he didn’t cry anymore, but it still took him a long, long time to do anything else.

He didn’t know what changed the morning he woke up and got out of bed on his own. Everything was the same as it was the day before. Mommy and Daddy and Auntie still weren’t here. He was still stuck. He was still sad. But he didn’t want to stay in bed anymore.

He was tired, but … not as tired as yesterday.

And that was just enough to make him climb out from under his covers, get dressed in the clothes Toriel laid out for him on the toy chest, and slipped out into the hall.

He stopped in the entrance to the living room, standing just far back enough so Toriel couldn’t see him. But she wasn’t looking toward him anyway. She was in her chair, her reading glasses on her nose, staring down at a book.

She looked tired. She looked worried. She didn’t look like she was paying much attention to the book at all.

She looked … sad.

And even if he still hurt, Heng didn’t want someone as nice as Toriel to feel sad, too.

He took a step forward, into the light of the room.

“Toriel?”

Toriel was graceful, and careful, and not the sort of person Heng imagined falling over. But she almost fell out of her chair when the word left his mouth.

She looked at him. She stared, eyes wide, her book falling to her lap, forgotten, as she took him in, like she couldn’t believe he was actually up without her coming to get him. Like she couldn’t believe that he had actually _talked._

He wondered if his voice sounded as weird to her as it did to him, after so long without hearing it.

It took her a minute, but finally she swallowed back her shock and set her book aside.

“Yes, Heng?” she asked, more gently than he had ever heard her speak before.

Heng shifted his weight from foot to foot. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t ask any more questions, but he could feel the tightness in the air, how desperate she was for him to speak again. He swallowed and held himself up a little tighter, even as he gripped the hem of his shirt.

“Can we make buh-scotch pie?”

Toriel blinked. Heng swallowed again and waited. She blinked a few more times, and finally, her shoulders fell, fast and hard, so much that he was afraid she really would fall out of her chair this time.

But then she smiled. It was a small smile, a shaky smile, but it was still a smile, and it made his chest feel warm.

“Of course we can, my child,” she breathed, as soft as her smile. “Of course.”

No tears came out, but Heng knew what it looked like when someone was trying not to cry.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen, laughing and mixing and getting pie all over themselves, and the longer he stood there with her, watching her smile at him like he belonged there, the less the sadness tried to drag him back down.

And by the end of the day, home no longer seemed quite so far away.

*

Toriel only found out about Heng’s birthday a week before it occurred.

The date didn’t exactly come up in normal conversation with a three-year-old boy, and his birthday had been far enough away when she first met him that he hadn’t been thinking about it. Of course, she had remembered the “five months” tacked onto the years of his age, and had subtly counted down, trying to figure out an approximation for when it would be. But in the end, she only learned it because Heng had asked her to teach him how to read a calendar, and as soon as they reached March, he immediately pointed to the number 3 and squealed “that’s my birthday!”

She would have appreciated a bit more advance notice, but she was a mother. She knew how to work with a deadline.

It had been a long time since she had planned a birthday party—and the first time she had planned one where she knew almost no one would attend—but she jumped into it like she had done it yesterday. She couldn’t do very much before the actual day, but she got all the supplies ready and hid them away in the spare bedroom, taking them out as soon as Heng had gone to bed the night before. She baked the cake and left it to cook, set out the three presents she had already wrapped on the table, then decorated the entire living room as elaborately as she could with things found around the Ruins.

She slept a few hours, but spent most of the night working, and by the time Heng wandered out of bed a little after seven the next morning, she was just finishing up the frosting on the cake, which read, in large, fancy letters, “Happy 4th Birthday, Heng!”

Heng just stood there, staring, like he had never seen a birthday cake before. She knew he had—he had told her all about his third birthday, with cake and presents and cupcakes and something called a “bounce house” and generally far more than she would ever be able to offer him here.

But when he looked up at her, she could have sworn he thought he would never have another birthday party again.

She hadn’t thought a three—now-four-year-old—could hug quite as tight as he did, but as usual, Heng blew her expectations away.

* 

It was funny, how a year could seem like forever when you were living it, but seem as fast as a bedtime story when you remembered it after it had already happened.

Heng wasn’t sure when time had started passing by faster—or when it seemed like it was passing by faster, since he was pretty sure it hadn’t _really_. But it seemed like the seven months between the time he started living with Toriel and his birthday was much, much longer than the time between his fourth and fifth birthdays, even though he knew it was actually much shorter.

Maybe it was because it was getting harder to remember the time before he had come to live with Toriel. Maybe it was because he had been having so much fun with Toriel that the time just seemed to go by faster. But he was pretty sure he had had fun before he had come to live here, too. He was sure he had had fun. He just … couldn’t remember the kinds of things he had done.

Sometimes he had dreams about the time before he came here. Things seemed clearer then, like he had just been through them, like they had happened yesterday instead of more than a year ago. Sometimes he woke up with tears in his eyes, but they went away as soon as he started thinking, because he couldn’t remember why he had started crying in the first place.

If he remembered them at all, the memories were gone by the time Toriel gave him breakfast.

Sometimes, when he crawled into Toriel’s lap when she sat in her big chair and asked for a story, he remembered things better. He remembered sitting on someone else’s lap, someone smaller, someone with less fur, and hearing different stories. He remembered hands petting his hair, carrying him to bed, tucking him in. He remembered songs sung in quiet rooms with the lights dimmed. He remembered soft piano music playing in the background, but he couldn’t remember what the piano looked like.

By the time he turned six, he couldn’t even remember if it had been a real piano, or just music someone had recorded and played back.

He was pretty sure his birthday parties had been different before he had come here, but he couldn’t remember what had made them different, or whether he had liked them more. He liked his birthday parties now, even if the only other people who came were a few particularly daring Froggits. Toriel always made his favorite type of cake, and he could eat as much of it as he wanted, even though she made really big cakes and he usually didn’t eat very much. There were no balloons or streamers, but she made the house look special, and he couldn’t imagine anything being better than what he had now.

He wasn’t sure why that made him feel so guilty.

He tried not to think about it too much. He focused on the pretty ribbons Toriel had wrapped the presents in, and when he asked, she tied one of his favorites into his hair. It looked a little silly, since his hair was almost too short to tie up, but he liked it, and he kept it in the rest of the day.

It wasn’t until his first dinner since turning six that he thought about it again.

Toriel had made his favorite meal, macaroni and cheese casserole, and it was really really good, because it was always really really good, but after the first few bites, Heng couldn’t focus. He fidgeted in his seat, and he knew Toriel was worried about him, and finally he worked up all his courage and looked at her.

“Toriel?”

Toriel set down her fork, looking at him right away, like she had been expecting it, like she had been _hoping_ he he would say something. “Yes, my child?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He swallowed and took another deep breath before opening it again.

“Did I do something bad?”

Toriel blinked. She stared at him for a long few seconds, then tilted her head.

“Why would you ever think that, Heng?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, staring down at his hands tucked in his lap. “I feel like … I did something wrong. But I don’t know what it is.”

He could feel her looking at him, but it took him a long time to look up again. When he did, her eyes were just as soft as he knew they’d be, her lips pressed together, her head tilted to the side. She looked … sad.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, dear,” she said, very gently. “And … even if you did, I know you would never do anything very bad. You are a very kind, loving child, and I know you would never hurt someone on purpose.”

She meant it. He could tell when she meant it, and she meant this.

He wasn’t sure if he believed it all the way. But he still smiled a small, careful smile and nodded, and by the time dinner was over, he had forgotten it again.

A few weeks after that, he had forgotten about his worries again, and the only thing he could remember about that birthday party was the presents and the cake and the pretty blue ribbon he still kept tied in his hair.

* 

“Mommy?”

Toriel stiffened, but didn’t lift her head. Her brow furrowed, and she closed her eyes, shutting out everything around her. No. She didn’t hear those things anymore. She had gotten better. It had been bad at first, when she first lost them and she heard their voices echoing in her head without end. But it had gotten better, and she could have sworn it had been more than six months since she had heard them outside her dreams.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

“Mommy?”

Toriel blinked.

That … wasn’t Asriel’s voice.

Or Chara’s.

It was …

She looked up.

Only to see Heng standing a few feet away from her, watching her with a furrowed brow and wide eyes, his head tilted in something between confusion and concern.

Toriel blinked again. “… yes?”

“Can I have some pie?” Heng asked, some of the confusion replaced by the gleam that always lit up in his eyes whenever he talked about dessert.

Toriel stared for a few seconds longer, her head still trying to wrap itself around the words she was so sure she had heard. She found herself nodding almost on reflex, her eyes still wide.

“Of … of course, my child,” she said, putting aside the book she had forgotten she was reading and pushing herself out of her chair. She cleared her throat and tried to smile through the haze of her shock. “I’ll … I’ll go get you some.”

Heng smiled, a brief, wordless thanks. But just before she turned around, the smile disappeared, and he tilted his head again, this time in the gesture that made him look a good ten years older than he really was.

“Are you okay?”

Toriel opened her mouth to reply, but paused, mouth hanging open, as she took a moment to look at him, _really_ look at him, for the first time in a while.

He was wearing clothes she had made for him, clothes he had helped her make. A sweater that had been made as much by him as it had by her. He helped her cook almost every day now, to the point that it was hard for her to imagine that she had spent years cooking alone. Every morning, he was there to greet her, and every evening, he was there to kiss her goodnight. He belonged there, as much as the other children who had once lived in his place.

He would never replace them. No one could replace them, and he was far too much his own person to ever be a replacement.

And … he was her son.

Just as Asriel had been her son, and Chara had been her child.

And she loved him just as much.

Her face softened, and her mouth curled into a small smile.

“Yes,” she said, very gently, but with as much conviction as she felt.

Heng blinked, then smiled back.

Toriel put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a quick rub, then a squeeze. She looked down at him, her little boy, the boy she couldn’t have loved more if he had been born from her own soul.

Then she turned around, and together, they walked into the kitchen to get their dessert.

*

Toriel wasn’t his mommy. Not his _first_ mommy.

He knew that. He knew that he had had a mommy and daddy and someone who he was pretty sure was called his aunt before he came here. He knew he had a family. He knew he had … other people he loved, even if he couldn’t remember their names. He knew he had a life, even if it was all blurry and he couldn’t remember any of the details. He knew there was a place he wanted to go back to, very badly.

But it was all so far away. It was like staring at something so far in the distance that you had to squint to really see it.

And he didn’t think he was ever going to see it again.

He felt bad, a little, for wanting to call Toriel his mommy, when he knew he had another mommy. A mommy who he remembered loving him very much. But … Toriel had told him once that if you loved someone, you wanted them to be happy, no matter what. And … he was happy here, with Toriel. She made him good food and he had a really nice room and fun toys and she read him stories and let him stir the batter when they made cookies and he felt … like he was home. Even if he knew it wasn’t his first home. She acted like his mommy, even if he had never called her that before today.

His first mommy would be happy that he was happy, wouldn’t she? She would want him to be happy, even if they couldn’t see each other again?

He thought so. His first mommy had loved him. He was sure of it. Even if he couldn’t remember much else about her, he knew she had loved him.

She would want him to call Toriel mommy, if he wanted to.

And he did want to. A mommy was the person who held you when you were sad and gave you hugs and kisses and did nice things just to make you happy and took care of you no matter what. A mommy was someone who made you feel happy, who made you feel safe. And Toriel did all those things for him. She did all those things for him even when he came in out of nowhere. Even though he hadn’t always lived here. Even though she hadn’t expected him.

She treated him like her son, and if he was her son … then she was his mommy, too.

Maybe it wasn’t his first home. But it was still his home. He was happy here. Mommy would want him to be happy.

And his second mommy would make sure he was.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said. I think you all know what you're getting into.

It wasn’t until a few months after his tenth birthday that Heng first asked about the Door.

Or, rather, what was beyond it.

He had mentioned the Door plenty of times. He had seen it by accident when he was four and Moom lost track of him just long enough for him to wander down the hallway downstairs and find it. He had asked where it led to, and when she said “nothing important,” he had believed her. But he hadn’t forgotten it. He had stopped asking, because even though he had been curious, it didn’t seem like _that_ big of a deal. He thought maybe she would tell him when he was a little older, like she would tell him the other things she didn’t think he was “ready” to hear. He could wait. She told him the other things. She would tell him this, too.

He didn’t think about it very often. Sometimes he would go months without thinking about it. Things were good here, after all. He was happy, almost all of the time. It wasn’t like he was _that_ interested in what was behind the door, not when he had plenty of nice things to do here.

But as the years passed, he started to think about the door more often. There were nice things to do here, but even the nicest things got boring after a while. Sometimes Mom took him around the old town, usually to scavenge for supplies, but it wasn’t like there was anyone _in_ the town. There were Froggits and Whimsuns and quite a few other small monsters that he ran into in the Ruins, but they didn’t talk much, and they rarely had any interest in playing. On rare occasion, he would come across a new puzzle, and that would keep him entertained for all of a few hours before he got used to that one, too.

It was … quiet here. And a little bit lonely.

He loved Mom. He loved her more than he could say.

But … he knew, vaguely, in the back of his mind, that he hadn’t always been here. That there was something other than just _here._

He knew about the surface. He knew that there were humans up there, other humans, like him.

But … there was also the Door.

The Door that seemed to make Mom more nervous than almost anything else in the house.

And as much as he didn’t want to make her nervous, as much as he tried to convince himself that if it _was_ something important, she would have told him, it kept whirling around in his head, over and over, faster and faster, until—

“What’s behind the Door?”

Until it burst out on its own.

He hadn’t been _planning_ to ask it. Not right now, anyway. He had thought about it, but he assumed he would wait a while, pick the best time to ask. But he supposed he knew, deep down, that the “best time” was never going to come. There would never be a time when the question wouldn’t hit her quite so hard. So maybe it was for the best that he got it over with.

Still, that didn’t help the twisting guilt in his stomach when Mom’s head shot up from her knitting, her eyes wide, her lips pressed tightly together, her hands frozen in the middle of a stitch.

She stared at him for a few seconds, as if to be sure that he had really said what she thought he said. He thought about taking it back, pretending he had never said it, but … no. He had to know. He had to do this.

It just wasn’t going to be easy.

Mom set her knitting aside and looked away for a moment, smoothing out the creases in her expression, forcing a smile back on her face. She did it so easily, even though Heng could see through it now. He wondered how many times she had faked a smile before.

“N-nothing, my child, it’s …”

“It goes somewhere,” he said, more certain than he had heard his own voice sound in a while. He felt another twinge of guilt at interrupting her—she never interrupted him—but pushed it back. He would apologize later. “If it was just a closet or any empty room, it wouldn’t have a door that big. And why wouldn’t you just show me what was behind it if there was nothing important?”

Mom didn’t tell him he was wrong. He knew she didn’t like lying to him, any more than she would like it if he lied to her. But she didn’t answer. Heng waited, but she still said nothing. He furrowed his brow and swallowed.

“Does it lead to someplace … else?”

She stiffened, and her eyes snapped up to meet his, panicked and wide.

They were calm a second later, but Heng had already seen it, and he wasn’t going to forget it.

“Where … would you get that idea, my child?” she asked, very gently.

He stared at her for a few seconds, then looked down and twiddled his fingers.

“Well … you call this place ‘the Ruins,’” he started. “But you also talk about the ‘Underground.’ But … why would you have two different names for the same place?”

Mom was very, very good at keeping her strongest emotions hidden, but he could still see the fear rising in the backs of her eyes. It was faint and distant but when you spent every day for seven years looking at someone, you learned to read them even more easily than a book.

At last, she looked away, letting out a soft sigh.

“The Underground is … all the space under the mountain,” she replied. “The Ruins are … here. Where we live.”

She kept her eyes turned away. Heng frowned.

“So … is the Ruins just _part_ of the Underground?”

Mom sighed again. “Heng …”

“There’s more out there, isn’t there?” he asked before she could finish. “More places I haven’t seen.”

“There’s nothing important out there,” she said, almost before he had closed his mouth.

It was fast. Way, way too fast to be honest. Heng furrowed his brow.

“But there _is_ something out there.”

Mom opened her mouth again, eyes locked on him, before she closed it again. She sighed.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” she said, more gently, but still firm, absolute, unwilling to shake. But Heng had learned from her, and he knew how to stand his ground. He stood there, staring at her, and finally she sighed again, softer, more pained than before. “Please, Heng … don’t go near the Door. It … it scares me.”

And suddenly all the certainty that had twisted itself into Heng’s chest vanished.

If there was one thing he hated more than anything, anything he would have done almost anything to avoid, it was make Mom sad.

His curiosity didn’t disappear. It was just as strong as before. But he loved his mom more than he was curious, and he found, when he opened his mouth after a long silence, that the answer came without him even having to think.

“Okay.”

Her shoulders dropped so fast that he thought she might fall over. Her eyes softened, and her mouth curved into a small but very genuine smile.

She started to speak, but paused, stood from her chair, and pulled him into a hug instead. He hugged her back.

She didn’t thank him out loud, but the hug said it plenty loud.

They spent the rest of the day making and decorating cookies in the kitchen, and every time thoughts of the Door wormed their way into his head, Heng pushed them back.

He was happy here. He didn’t need anything else.

*

He didn’t ask again for a long time.

He could tell when topics made Mom uncomfortable, and he didn’t like making her uncomfortable. He got the feeling, sometimes, that she was very sad underneath the smile she always wore, and he didn’t want to make her sadder than she already was.

But that didn’t stop him being curious.

He waited three weeks after asking before he first snuck down to look at the Door again. He wasn’t going to go through it or anything. He just wanted to look. Now that he knew it actually _led_ somewhere, what it _was_ … it looked different.

He didn’t know why. It was the same Door, tall and intricate and mysterious.

But before … it had been a little like a very pretty wall that happened to have a handle attached.

Now it was like any other door. It led somewhere else.

Somewhere Mom didn’t like.

He didn’t want to upset her, but … he had to see it again. He had to look at it, even if he never got to see what was behind it.

He chose a time when Mom was busy in the kitchen and she thought he was playing in his room. He knew how to move quietly—he had planned enough surprise birthday parties for her over the years that he was very good at it—and he slipped down the stairs to the basement without any trouble. She wasn’t expecting it, and he wouldn’t be long.

Just a quick peek. That was it.

The hall was shorter than he remembered, but he guessed that made sense—he was bigger now, and he could move a lot faster. But it was still long, and dark, and empty, and his footsteps echoed here unlike anywhere he had been before.

When he turned the last corner and saw the end of the hall—saw the Door—his heart skipped a beat, and he picked up his pace almost without realizing it. Just a peek. One peek, then back upstairs.

He stopped a few feet away from the Door and lifted his head enough to see the top of it, then lowered his gaze, bit by bit, to take it all in. It was … beautiful. Old. Like parts of the Ruins that Mom said were made a long, long time ago. He wondered when the Door had been made.

He wondered why.

His eyes fell, at last, on the handle. It was big, like the Door itself, but it was still just a handle, like one on any other door around here. Was it locked? Surely it was locked. But … if it was locked, there wouldn’t be any problem with him touching it, would there?

It was just a touch. Just one touch. It wouldn’t do any harm.

He licked his lips and took a deep breath, then lifted his hand, reaching it out toward the rusted silver in front of him.

“Heng!”

He yanked his hand back like it had been burned..

It was the sharpest tone he had ever heard out of Mom’s mouth. He didn’t want to look at her, he didn’t want to see the kind of face that would go along with a voice like that, but he was already turning around before he could think, he was looking at her, she was running toward him and she was afraid, she was _angry,_ he never saw her angry even when he did something wrong she didn’t get angry but she was now and … and …

“What are you doing?” she all but snapped as she came to a sudden stop only a few feet away from him.

Heng hunched his shoulders as he stared up at her, feeling smaller than he ever had in his life.

“I was just looking,” he muttered, his voice soft and high-pitched and far more fearful than he wanted it to be.

Mom blinked. And with that one blink, the anger disappeared, as quickly as if it had never been there.

Her whole body seemed to sink, and where the anger had burned in her eyes, now there was only smoldering guilt.

She swallowed hard and reached out, slowly, gently, to rest a hand on his shoulder.

“I … I’m sorry. I … I didn’t mean to yell at you. That was wrong of me,” she said, and it was Mom again, Mom who loved him, Mom who would never yell at him, Mom who could solve problems without resorting to anger. Her lips pursed, and he saw pain flash across her eyes again. “It’s alright to look at the door. Just … please don’t touch it. It’s dangerous out there.”

Heng almost let it go. He _almost_ let it go. But he felt his eyebrows furrowing no matter how much he wanted to stop them.

“I thought you said there wasn’t anything important out there.”

Mom tensed again. Not in anger. It didn’t look anything like it had before, and he knew, for sure, that even if she really did get angry, she wouldn’t yell at him like that. She looked at him for a moment, soft and tight, and finally let out a long breath, giving a small smile.

“How would you like to play a game?”

Heng’s mouth almost fell open.

Because he knew this bothered her. He knew she didn’t like it, didn’t want to talk about it. But … there were a lot of things she didn’t like to talk about, but she still did, at least after a while.

He didn’t want to _actually_ go through the Door. He didn’t want to leave.

He just wanted to know what was behind it.

But … she wasn’t going to tell him.

She was never going to tell him.

No matter how many times he asked. No matter what he did. She would always just try to distract him. She would always change the subject or try to get him to change his mind.

She said the Door wasn’t important, but it was the most important thing in the world, if she was so scared of what was behind it.

If she couldn’t even tell him why it was dangerous in the first place.

A little part of him was mad. Really mad. Did this mean she didn’t trust him? That she didn’t think he was mature enough to deal with whatever was out there? Maybe he was only ten, but he was far from a baby. He had read most of the books on her shelves, even the ones that were apparently meant for people much older. He was friends with all of the monsters around the Ruins. And Mom had told him plenty of other things, she trusted him, she had _always_ trusted him.

But … not with this.

A little part of him was mad, but the rest of him couldn’t be mad when she was looking at him so gently, so lovingly, when he could tell just from her eyes how much she cared about him.

Even if she didn’t trust him as much as he thought.

So even though it was hard, he still managed to force a tiny smile on his face and swallow back the lump in his throat.

“Checkers?”

And Mom relaxed, her eyes going soft for real, her whole face gentle. The fear disappeared as if it had never been there, long forgotten, even though he knew it was still fresh in both of their minds. “Checkers sound wonderful.”

Heng nodded, and when she gently guided him forward, her hand resting warm and secure on his shoulder, he followed without complaint.

He didn’t glance behind him at the Door, but he swore he could feel it there, see every detail in his head, and again, his mouth opened without his permission.

“Will you tell me some day?” he asked, looking up at Mom and trying to hide how desperate he felt. “What’s behind the door?”

But Mom didn’t look at him. She stared ahead, her face distant, unreadable, and far older than he remembered it looking in a long, long time.

“When you’re older.”

Heng’s chest twisted, and his breath caught in his throat, but he didn’t reply. He let out a soft, almost silent sigh and turned ahead, focusing on the path ahead of him and Mom’s familiar presence at his side.

And as hard as it was, he tried to believe she was telling the truth.

*

Tomorrow, he was going to turn twelve.

He wasn’t sure why it felt different than his other birthdays. Maybe it wasn’t. He had read in a few books that thirteen was a big birthday, but … twelve felt big, too.

Nothing was changing. Nothing was different. Turning twelve would be no different than turning eleven, or ten. It would probably be no different than when he turned thirty. But as he looked at the date on the little calendar in his room, looked at the number he had written months ago in bright blue marker, it still felt different.

Maybe it _was_ different. But maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe it was just because he was getting older again, and so little had changed. And now he was beginning to realize that some things weren’t going to change at all.

He hadn’t asked about the Door in more than a year. He didn’t go near it anymore. He had asked a few more times during those first months after his initial discovery, but each time he could feel Mom getting more and more anxious. So he stopped. He didn’t like it when Mom was upset, even if she made sure never to snap at him again. He loved Mom. He didn’t like the idea of doing something Mom had asked him not to do. She didn’t ask him not to do very much, and when she did, there was usually a good reason.

But usually, she _told_ him the reason. Don’t touch the stove when it’s on because it’s very hot and could burn you. Don’t run where it’s really wet because you could slip and hurt yourself. Even if he didn’t understand right away, she always took the time to explain it, and it was never anything that made him feel like he was missing out.

Surely, she had a good reason for not wanting him to go through the Door.

She just wouldn’t tell him what it was.

Heng had waited. He had waited a long, long time, hoping that she would realize how old he had gotten. Definitely old enough to know why she didn’t want him to leave the Ruins. But she didn’t. And he was starting to believe she never would.

Mom was old. That was one of the few things she had told him about her life before he came here: she was very, very old. To her, he would probably always be very, very young.

He had never thought very much about the rest of his life before now. Mom had never told him how long humans lived, but he guessed, from some of the books he had read, that it wasn’t as long as monsters. He was still young, so he probably had a long time left to live.

But if Mom never thought he was old enough … if Mom never told him what was behind that door, if he never got to see anything but the Ruins …

The Ruins had never seemed small before. But now, thinking about that Door, he felt, for the first time in years, like there was a whole other world out there, and he was only seeing a part of it.

He wanted to see the rest.

Even if it meant making Mom upset.

He would be careful. He was always careful, and he would be extra-careful with this. Just a quick look, then back inside. That was it.

One of the good things about being very careful was that he was very good at sneaking around. He had never used it to sneak out before, especially in the middle of the night. But it was easier than he suspected. Probably because Mom didn’t think he _would_ sneak out. He felt bad. He would probably feel bad tomorrow. He had seen Mom wrapping his presents, making his cake. She did so many nice things for him. It felt like he wasn’t trusting her.

But … she wasn’t trusting him, either.

He just wanted to know what was behind the Door.

Even though it had been more than a year since he last went down the stairs, he still remembered all the creaky spots, and how to avoid them. He moved slowly, carefully, even once he got down to the hallway. It was dark and empty and scary, but he kept going.

The Door loomed in front of him a minute later, larger than it had looked before. His heart stuttered as he ran a hand over the Door, brushing the wood with his fingertips. It was cold. He couldn’t remember if it had been cold before.

He glanced over his shoulder one more time, took a deep breath, and put his hand on the handle.

Then he pushed it open.

The Door creaked painfully loudly as it opened, slowly, and a gust of chilling wind hit his face so hard he gasped. He blinked at the dim light outside, still bright compared to the shadows of the hallway, and pushed the Door open a little further.

There was … snow.

That was what it was called, right? He swore he had seen it before, he knew the word, but … he couldn’t remember. It was all fuzzy. Had he seen it before he came here? It had never snowed in the Ruins, he was sure of that.

It was cold. Much colder than it was in the Ruins. He barely noticed it at first, through his sweater, but as he took his first step outside, his shoe crunching into the snow, he felt it in full. Deep, biting chill, his breath turning into thick white clouds in front of his face. He took another step, and another, leaving the Door cracked behind him. He didn’t want to risk not being able to get back inside.

He wouldn’t be out here for long. Just a look. Just one quick look, then right back home.

Mom would never know.

He wrapped his arms around himself and tucked his hands in his armpits to keep them warm, but kept looking around, even as he walked. There were trees to either side of him, tall trees, with deep green leaves all over them. There were a few trees in the Ruins, but … none like this. None so tall. None so alive.

They seemed to go on forever. Was that all there was out here? Trees and snow? It didn’t seem very dangerous. Maybe it was only dangerous further away?

Or … maybe there was something hiding in the trees? They were thick trees, it would be easy for something to stay hidden within them. He slowed down, looked a little closer into the woods. He didn’t _see_ anything, but …

He tightened his arms around his body. Maybe … maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe … maybe he should go back now. He had seen what was behind the Door, hadn’t he? That was all he needed. He had seen it, and now he could go home.

But … maybe it would be alright to see a little more, maybe see if the trees ended, maybe if he went a little bit further—

Then something crunched in the snow.

It was … quiet at first. Faint. Maybe … maybe it was his own footstep. Or a branch. Trees lost branches sometimes, right? Right. He was fine. Everything was fine. He could just—

Another crunch.

And another after that.

He had frozen now, he couldn’t turn, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, it was coming closer, step by step, until it was only a few feet away and …

He could hear it now. Not just the footsteps. But the rustling of clothes. The in and out of shaky breath.

Something was behind him.

Some _one_ was behind him.

He stiffened and swallowed.

Maybe it was Mom. Maybe she had heard him and come after him. But … Mom would have come running and this person sounded like they were trying to sneak up behind him. Mom would be talking, saying how worried she had been, maybe she would even be mad, that would have been okay, even if she was mad at least it would be Mom and he would still be safe he didn’t want to be here he shouldn’t have gone through the door, he just wanted to go back go home he’d be safe safe for the rest of his life he—

“… I’m sorry.”

Heng sucked in a sharp breath and turned around to face the voice just over his shoulder.

Then something hit him in the head. Pain erupted in his brain, and he swore he caught a purple face staring at him before the world faded to black.

*

It was Heng’s twelfth birthday, and Toriel was going to make it his best yet.

She had spent weeks planning it. Granted, she had also spent weeks planning all of his other birthday parties—except for his fourth, when she didn’t have enough notice. But she was still going to make sure that this one turned out even better than all the others.

She had even invited some of the other monsters around the Ruins to join them. Most of them seemed a bit nervous to be around her, for whatever reason, but after years of three or four Froggits attending, apparently they had finally been convinced that she was harmless. And besides, they all adored Heng, and were eager to be there to support him in any way they could.

She had baked a cake the day before, and she had a small pile of presents she had either made or collected from around the Ruins. There were still quite a few things the other monsters had left when they moved out, and it wasn’t too difficult to find new toys than an almost-teenage child would find interesting.

Almost teenage. That’s right. In just a year, Heng would be turning thirteen years old.

She had never had a teenager before.

But thinking about her smiling, gentle, wonderful boy, she wasn’t worried. She was a little sad to see him grow up this fast, but at the same time, she was just glad to see him growing up.

He would be a wonderful teenager, and some day, a long time from now, he would be a wonderful adult.

Heng was an early riser, a lot like herself, so she made sure to get up a little earlier than usual, just to make sure everything was ready for him when he woke up—including his favorite meal of cinnamon bunnies. Perhaps they weren’t the healthiest way to start the day, but Heng enjoyed them, and seeing his smile never got old.

She mixed up the batter, put it in the molds, and baked it in only a few minutes when her magic, laying out the bunnies on a plate before drizzling them with sugar and icing. She filled up a tall glass with chocolate milk, but left it in the fridge. She could take it out when Heng came out of his room.

Giving one last smile to the table laid out before her, Toriel walked into the living room and sat down in her chair to wait.

She expected she might be waiting for a while. After all, she _had_ started getting ready quite early. But still, Heng was always excited on his birthday, and usually got up even earlier as a result.

But not today.

She sat in her chair, knitting and reading, but Heng didn’t come out. His normal wakeup time came and went, and before she knew it, it was past eight o’clock, more than an hour after he usually got out of bed. She waited a little while longer, but by a quarter after eight, she began to fidget, and thought perhaps, just perhaps, he had had a bad night and not slept well, and wasn’t going to wake up for a while on his own.

Well. If he needed to sleep, she would certainly let him, but she should at least let him know the food was ready.

She put away her knitting and her book and crossed the hall to the bedroom door.

“Heng?” she called, tapping on the wood. “Are you ready to come out and have your birthday breakfast?”

She waited for the thumping of bare feet on wood, the excited squeal, the door swinging open under her hand to reveal a smiling young boy. Or even a groggy voice calling back that he wasn’t feeling well, that he wasn’t ready to get up, asking if he could please have breakfast in bed.

Nothing happened.

Toriel furrowed her brow and knocked again, a little louder this time.

“Heng? Are you awake?”

She waited for a good ten seconds, but she heard nothing. Her mouth tilted into a frown.

“Heng, I’m coming in.”

She gave him a few seconds longer. Maybe he had been caught up in a particularly interesting dream and was slow to wake. But when she was met with silence once again, she finally turned the knob and opened the door.

And found the light from the hall shining in on an empty room.

Empty. Heng’s bed was empty.

She was across the room before she even realized she was moving, flicking on the lamp next to the bed. Maybe it was just the light, maybe she was just seeing things, but … no.

It was empty. It was really empty.

She knew Heng wasn’t the type to play pranks, but she ducked to the ground anyway, peering under the bed. Nothing. She opened the toy chest. No.

Had he snuck out of his room while she was baking? Perhaps something had happened and he had gone to look for her in her room. But … he would have heard her in the kitchen, wouldn’t he?

It didn’t matter. She had to check. She had to be sure.

She scrambled back down the hall, swinging open the door to her own room so fast that it slammed into the wall.

“Heng?”

Nothing. Toriel ducked her head in every room, then again after that, and again and again, checking every corner, every crevice she could think of.

“Heng, where are you?”

No answer.

It was only after she had searched the entire house five times over, as well as a good portion of the Ruins nearby, that she thought to check to downstairs hall.

Heng had gone down there a few times, certainly, but …

He had been curious about it. He hadn’t asked about it that much, and not at all recently, he hadn’t _focused_ on it, and she hadn’t thought …

She couldn’t remember the last time she had run so fast.

She found herself in front of the Door in what felt like only a few seconds, calling his name, even though there was no place for him to hide. Even though she had known, with every corner she passed in the empty hallway without a sign of him, where he was. Where was the only place left he could be.

Toriel stared up at the Door she had closed fourteen years ago, and vowed she would never open again.

The Door that had been left cracked just a few inches open by the last person who had passed through.

It was a little bit incredible, how quickly she broke that vow when she had a good reason.

She barely registered throwing the Door open herself, scrambling through and breaking into a run. She came so close to calling Heng’s name, it was right on her lips, but she didn’t dare, she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk the chance of someone hearing it, someone who didn’t know about him yet, she had to keep him safe and that meant keeping him _secret,_ she just had to find him and take him back and—

Her feet slowed, almost tripping over themselves as they came to a stop.

There was something in the snow, just a few yards ahead of her.

It was … tiny. So tiny she could have easily passed it by. It was pale, almost pale enough to blend into the snow.

But it was also familiar. Just familiar enough that she could have picked it out anywhere.

She stopped when she stood only a foot away from it, staring down with wide eyes and pursed lips.

It was ribbon.

A little blue ribbon.

The same kind of ribbon she kept in her sewing basket. The kind that had been sitting there for more than fourteen years.

The same kind of ribbon Heng tied in his hair most mornings, as part of his routine, before he sat down to eat.

Toriel choked.

It … it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like she was the only monster in the Underground who owned ribbons. They were good for decorating, for monsters who had hair, for wrapping gifts. And most of the ribbon looked the same, wherever she went. It didn’t mean anything.

But she found herself bending to pick it up anyway, holding it in careful fingers, breaking into a slower walk than before.

She had barely been walking for a minute when she saw the red.

Just little bits of it at first, so little it might have been a trick of the light. But there was no reason to see red light in these forests. No reason to see red that would stand out so starkly against the white of the snow.

No reason for it to be so thick. No reason for it to have dried in thick droplets on top of the ice.

No reason for it to keep going when she looked ahead.

She hadn’t eaten since yesterday, but she swore she could feel her stomach rebelling, twisting and rolling against anything that had ever been put inside it, she was breathing hard, fast, too fast, she couldn’t get the air in, no, no no no no _no,_ this wasn’t real, this wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be … it had to be something else, it _had_ to be something else, but …

It was blood.

Fresh blood.

And monsters didn’t bleed.

She kept going. She had to find him, he was … he was hurt, he needed her, she just had to keep going, she could follow the trail, she could help him, heal him, she could—

She had been walking for less than a minute when the trail ended.

The blood stopped.

And there was a single, tiny shoe, a shoe she had picked out and mended herself, sitting alone in the middle of the snow.

With footsteps leading away from it.

One set.

One large, clawed set, far bigger than the owner of the shoe.

Toriel couldn’t breathe.

She stood there, staring down at it, trying to choke down air, looking ahead, looking at the footprints, the shoe, the last droplets of blood lingering in the snow. Her fingers twitched to reach down and grab it, that was Heng’s favorite shoe, she had to keep it safe for him, keep it safe for when he … when he …

But …

Without thinking, Toriel spun around and ran the other way.

She told herself to stop, stop running, turn around, go after him, find him, maybe he was still alive, maybe there was still a way to save him, but that blood was old, it was dry, the snow had already begun to cover the little shoe, the ribbon had almost disappeared into the snow—

If that much time had passed … if it had been so long …

She stumbled through the open Door, and before she could think better of it, she slammed it behind her, the walls shaking from the impact.

Her back pressed into it as she slid down to the floor.

And only when the shaking had gone silent, only when the Door had gone still behind her, did the first tears begin to fall.

They dripped off her chin and onto her robes, faster and faster by the second. She couldn’t breathe. She had forgotten how to breathe, her throat had closed up, no, no no _no,_ this wasn’t happening, not again, oh stars, please, not again, not another one, she couldn’t … she couldn’t …

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real, it couldn’t happen again. Please. Please, please, please, anything, she would do _anything,_ it couldn’t be … he couldn’t be …

Her breath came in in a choked sob, and she pushed herself to her feet and ran forward, almost tripping over her robes twice on the way back to the stairs. But she didn’t stop. She never stopped, stumbling up the stairs and through the house, calling out his name through a throat thick with tears.

“Heng! _Heng_!”

No one answered.

Nobody came.

She kept calling him, please, please please _please,_ this couldn’t be happening, he was just lost, he was just playing a game, a silly game, but he was so careful, so responsible, so quiet, he didn’t like to play jokes and he would know that this had gone too far, maybe he just couldn’t hear her, maybe he was asleep, he would wake up, he had to wake up, he had to be here, but the ribbon the red the _blood_ —

She cried his name, but nobody came.

Her knees trembled and collapsed underneath her, and she fell to the floor, close to the wall. She was over two thousand years old, she was a queen, a _mother,_ but she curled up like a child, tucking her knees close to her body like it might protect her, like it might let her believe this wasn’t real, she didn’t want it to be real but it _was_ he was gone he was never coming back she had let him get hurt she had let him die _her baby was dead all over again_ —

She sobbed, she wailed, she pleaded and begged and bargained and prayed.

Nothing happened.

She sat on the floor, alone, and the only thing to meet her screams was silence.

*

She didn’t know when she stopped crying. She couldn’t tell when the tears finally ran out, and she sat there sobbing dry sobs until she was too tired to do even that. She wasn’t sure how she managed to push herself to her feet and walk down the hall, but somehow, she made it to her bed.

She didn’t leave for the next two days, and when she finally stood up again, she fell to her knees, crying as hard as before.

But the tears couldn’t last forever. She had cried so much already, cried for two children lost a lifetime _so recently how much time had passed it seemed like forever_ ago. It felt like her heart had been carefully pieced back together, and just as the pieces were starting to settle, they were shattered once more. After only a few minutes, the tears stopped, and she forced herself to her feet again. Her legs could barely support her, but she forced them to carry her out of her bedroom. The door felt like pushing open a stone block, and when she turned to the right, toward the rest of the hall, the rest of the house, it was like standing in a stranger’s home.

Then her eyes drifted to the final door, right at the front of the hall, cracked open, exactly as she had left it.

Heng’s door.

Heng’s room.

Her … it was his … and he was never … he was never going to walk through that door again, she would open that door and he wouldn’t be there, he was gone, he was _gone,_ he was gone because—

Asgore.

Asgore had …

He had said he was going to do it. He had stood in front of the entire underground and _said_ he was going to do it, but now he had actually … he had … to a _child,_ she had heard it, she had believed it, but she hadn’t really …

He had murdered a child.

He had murdered a child just like the one he had taken in all those years ago.

He had murdered _her child._

He had murdered her baby, her _son,_ her …

Her hands were already burning by the time she noticed them, and it was all she could do to throw a fireball at the wall opposite her to keep it from scorching her dress. She threw another, and another, and the walls were on fire everything was burning but she didn’t care _she didn’t care her baby was dead and Asgore had killed him—_

She tried to imagine the man she had fallen in love with, the man who had comforted her in the aftermath of the war, the man that had shown mercy on even the worse crimes, had offered understanding and kindness to every mistake, who had refused to get mad no matter what Chara did to try to upset them, and _he had murdered an innocent little boy._

She wanted to kill him.

She kept throwing fireballs, again and again until she was throwing fire onto fire and everything was burning and she was just standing there, watching her house go up in smoke She panted and wheezed and her eyes burned but no more tears came. She stood still for a minute, staring at the flames eating away at her walls and furniture, her hands shaking, her whole _body_ trembling, her soul shuddering so hard she wondered if she might just fall down and end all of this she didn’t want to live in a world where the man she loved had betrayed her _she didn’t want to live in a world where her children were dead_ —

But …

But …

Her hands moved on reflex, rising from her sides and forcing the flames down through sheer force of will. They dimmed, bit by bit, until they were nothing but sizzling ashes. Her walls had been scorched, much of the wallpaper burned away. It would be a miracle if she could salvage her favorite chair. Her bookshelf had survived, with all her books intact: the one thing she couldn’t replace.

Heng’s room hadn’t been touched.

Apparently, even in her deepest fit of anger, she couldn’t bring herself to risk harming anything that belonged to him.

Even if he would never see it again.

She let out a long, shivering breath, and let herself drop down to her knees, breathing in the smoke and barely noticing how it burned her throat.

That room had belonged to three children already. It was the room Asriel had decorated when he finally decided he was ready to sleep in his own bed. It was the room Chara had been welcomed into before they moved to New Home.

It was the room that had sheltered her son for the past nine years.

And … it was the room she would give to any child who needed it.

Because … another child _would_ need it.

Because more humans were going to come.

Chara had come. Heng had come. Both of them in a span of … perhaps twenty years? It was so short a time, so short compared to how long they had been down here. Twenty years.

If she was going to stay here, stay alone, guard the Ruins, guard the entrance to the underground, there would certainly be more to come. They would fall down, and she would find them, just like she had found Heng. And she would care for them. She would soothe their grief when she explained they could never go home, she would give them a _new_ home, a home they loved, a home they would want to stay in, but someday they would get curious, they would want to see the people they had left behind, they would go through the Door and she would follow them and …

And …

… she couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t do it. Not again. She would fall down if that happened again, she had heard of monsters who died from their souls shattering and it was a wonder it hadn’t happened to her already. If she went after them, if she searched for them, if she saw the proof she had been too late, because if Heng had barely made it out of the Ruins, he hadn’t been there long, someone had found him right away, _she would always be too late_ …

She couldn’t take it.

Not one more time.

But she couldn’t keep them here.

She could try. She _would_ try, she _had_ to try. She would do everything in her power to convince him to stay. She had … she had done wrong with Heng, maybe she had told him too much, or too little, she didn’t know, but she would do something different, maybe she could convince them to stay with her for the rest of their lives, let them live safe and happy with her, but if she _couldn’t_ …

If she couldn’t save them …

If another child fell, she would care for them. That wasn’t a question. She would love them as they deserved to be loved, because she couldn’t do anything else.

But if they left … if they slipped past her, if they left the Ruins before she could stop them …

… she couldn’t go after them.

Not if it meant she would see the evidence of what she already knew was true.

Not if it meant knowing, without a doubt, that she had lost them forever. That they would never come back.

That she had failed in the duty she had taken on from the moment she decided to have a child.

She had made her choice years ago, when her former husband made his pronouncement, when the entire underground cheered for the demise of the humans, when she took her things in the night and ran. She had made her choice to run, because she couldn’t stand to be there, she couldn’t stand to watch the man she loved condemn children _just like the one they had loved as their own._

She was never going back.

She couldn’t change the underground’s mind, not on her own.

But she could stand guard. Guard the place where the humans fell, and do all she could to keep each one safe from the wrath of the monsters who had become exactly what humans had once accused.

And if she failed …

If she lost another …

Then she would try again.

She would never stop trying to protect them.

Even if they chose to leave her nonetheless.

She pushed herself to her feet, her legs shaking and threatening to collapse. She walked through the house, checking for any signs that the fire had spread, but of course, it had not. It had left the walls scorched, several old paintings irreparably damaged. She would need to do repairs. Extensive repairs. But it wasn’t like she was lacking for time. She had all the time in the world.

Alone.

So for now, she ignored the mess, ignored the remains of her rage. She brushed the ashes and smoke dust off her robes and stepped out the door, into the courtyard leading into the rest of the Ruins.

One day, another human would fall. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or for many years to come. But one day, they would. And she would be there. She would greet them, heal them, care for them. Take them back to her home and do everything in her power to give them the life that had been torn away from her little boy.

And even if it was only for a while, she was going to keep them safe.

No matter what it took.

* 

In a bed of yellow flowers, sunlight streaming down on his chubby face, in a body far younger and more pained than he had felt in nine long years, Heng opened his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so end's Patience's tale! Next is Kindness - as I will be out of town (out of the country, actually) for the next couple of weeks, Kindness's first chapter will be posted on Sunday, May 13. See you all then!


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